Dave's sticker: on the value of adding an ID to your email subject

Dave just emailed from California. The Small Business sticker we mailed back in February hasn't arrived. :-(

(We sent them in standard envelopes with $4 worth of stamps. I wondered what percentage would actually arrive. A: not 100%.)

He replied to an email that I'd sent on 1st February asking people to confirm their addresses. The subject line of that email was:

Decimal.Business sticker mailout - please confirm [D85.21.11]

Well, how convenient. Guess how long it took me to find the original document with the labels we printed?

IDs in filenames

I'm sure I've written about this elsewhere but I can't find it now: a few years ago, my mate and ex-boss Alex sent me an MS Project file that was 5 years old. 'Do you know if this is the latest version?', he asked.

I'd named the file 32.18 Something something. So I logged in, found the old SharePoint Library, and navigated to that folder. I was there in less than a minute. (It was the latest version.)

Having an ID 'follow' a file or email around is invaluable and takes no extra time.